Quantum Cryptography

Answer Key Lesson QUANTUM CRYPTOGRAPHY Created by the IQC Scientific Outreach team Contact: [email protected] Institute for Quantum Computing University of Waterloo 200 University Avenue West Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3G1 uwaterloo.ca/iqc Copyright © 2021 University of Waterloo Answer Key Outline QUANTUM CRYPTOGRAPHY ACTIVITY GOAL: Understand how the superposition and measurement principles can be used to communicate securely. LEARNING OBJECTIVES ACTIVITY OUTLINE The no-cloning theorem. We start by outlining the no-cloning theorem and how it relates to the quantum uncertainty principle. Cryptography and the one-time CONCEPT: pad. We only get to measure a quantum state once. We then take a detour into cryptography to outline the one-time pad The BB84 quantum key cryptographic scheme, and the issue of secret key distribution. A distribution protocol. potential solution to this issue is quantum key distribution (QKD). Compatible vs. incompatible CONCEPT: measurement bases. Quantum systems can carry and encode information. We show how QKD can be used to alert users to the presence of an eavesdropper, but only if we consider encodings in multiple measurement bases. CONCEPT: Measuring in one basis disturbs the information in another. PREREQUISITE KNOWLEDGE The polarization of light Superposition and measurement (the Two Golden Rules) SUPPLIES REQUIRED QKD Worksheets #1 and #2 Lesson QUANTUM CRYPTOGRAPHY PHOTONS, QUBITS, AND THE NO-CLONING THEOREM A photon is an indivisible unit of light. While it is countable like a particle is, it still has many of the same wave properties as bright beams of light do. For example, a photon may have its electromagnetic field polarized along a specific direction. We can encode information into photons using these properties. We can describe the polarization of a photon in terms of two mutually exclusive states, such as horizontal and vertical polarization. By encoding the photon as either horizontal or vertical, we can encode binary information, or bits, into the photons. For example, “0” could be encoded as horizontal polarization and “1” as vertical polarization. We can also create photons that are in a superposition of polarization states, and measure them in different measurement bases. These properties allow us to encode quantum bits, or qubits, into the polarization of a photon. Just like binary bits, qubits can take one of two values, “0” or “1”. But they can also exist in a superposition of those states as well! Say that we have one qubit, and we want to make a copy of it. While we can split a classical beam of light into two beams each with half the original intensity, a photon cannot be split in two in the same way. In fact, it can be proven that if you are given a quantum system in an unknown superposition state, there is no way to copy this state without destroying the original state. This result is the no-cloning theorem: The No-Cloning Theorem It is impossible to copy an unknown quantum state. The uncertainty principle implies that it is impossible to know everything about a quantum state; if we measure one property, we disturb the others. The Uncertainty Principle If we measure a quantum system, we disturb it. Since we disturb the system when we measure it, and we cannot make a copy of the system, we cannot learn anything about a quantum system without disturbing it in some way. In this activity, we’ll investigate how we can use this fact to create unbreakable information security tools. Using quantum mechanics to protect information is known as quantum cryptography, and the protocol we’ll study here is called Quantum Key Distribution. 3 Answer Key CRYPTOGRAPHY: THE SCIENCE OF SECRETS When you send private information over the internet, such as emails, your banking information, or torrid love letters, the information is encrypted in such a way that only the sender and the receiver can access that information, and any malicious eavesdropper is unable to decrypt that information in a reasonable amount of time. While using the internet as a communication channel, we encrypt information with security protocols based on mathematical problems that are very hard to do in reverse. This is known as computational cryptography. For example, it is very easy to multiply two numbers together, and a computer can do it quickly even for very large numbers. But finding the factors of a large number is very difficult, even for a supercomputer. The most used computational crypto-protocol is known as RSA. Attempting to break the RSA protocol would take thousands, even millions, of years for the most powerful supercomputer running the best-known algorithm. Although safe in practice, computational cryptography is vulnerable to advances in algorithms and breakthroughs in computing, such as the development of the quantum computer. In fact, we already know how to break most crypto-protocols in use today if we had a quantum computer, and none of the other computational-based protocols are proven to be secure against a quantum attack. However, there are protocols not based on computational complexity that are known to be secure against any potential attack. The most well-known is the one-time pad, also known as the Vernam Cipher. THE ONE-TIME PAD In practice, information is stored, manipulated and communicated in strings of bits (series of 0’s and 1’s). For example, using the ASCII encoding, we write the word “hi” as: “hi” = 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 In the one-time pad protocol, we assume that the sender (Alice) and the receiver (Bob) share two completely random, but identical and secret strings of bits that are at least as long as the message. Each string is known as the key. The protocol goes as follows: 1. Alice generates a cipher text by adding the key to her message bit-by-bit (“bitwise”). She adds the first bit of the message with the first bit of the key, then adds the second bit of message with the second bit of the key, and so on. When adding bitwise, we skip the remainder, so: 0+0=0, 0+1=1+0=1 and 1+1=0. 2. Alice sends the cipher text to Bob. 3. Bob retrieves the original message by adding his key to the cipher text bit-by-bit. Let’s now put that protocol into practice: 1. Suppose Alice and Bob share the 16-bit key below and Alice wants to secretly send the number “42” to Bob, which is “101010” in binary. Ahead of time, the shared the secret key “100111”. Fill in the table below: Alice Bob Message 101010 001101 Cipher Key 100111 100111 Key Cipher 001101 101010 Message 2. Explain why Bob can retrieve the message by adding the key again. Adding the key once scrambles the message, and adding the same key again unscrambles it. In bitwise addition, 1+1=0, so x+1+1=x+0=x for any value of x. 3. If an eavesdropper (let’s call them Eve) manages to intercept the cipher, would they be able to recover the original message? They could only recover the message if they also have the key. 4. If the eavesdropper does not know the key, what is the probability that they successfully guess it at random? What if the key was twice or three times as long? Each bit has two possible options, 0 or 1. For six bits, there are 2*2*2*2*2*2 = 26 = 64 possibilities. The probability of randomly guessing the correct key is then 1 in 64. If they message and key were twice as long (12 bits), there would be 212 = 4096 possibilities. If they were three times as long (18 bits), there would be 262,144 possibilities. This is an example of exponential growth. 5. Suppose Alice sends an encrypted five-letter word to Bob, and by chance Eve finds a key that decrypts the message to “Hello”. Can Eve know for sure that Alice was sending that word? What other possible words could Alice have sent? Eve cannot be sure that “Hello” is the correct decryption. Because the key and the message are the same length, any five-letter word could be decrypted from the scrambled cipher text. Even if Eve tries every possible key, they will be left with multiple possible decryptions and no way to tell which message was actually intended. 6. Although unbreakable, the one-time pad is not commonly used due to impracticality. What assumption made in the protocol makes it impractical in the real world? We assumed that Alice and Bob share the key in the first place, which must be done in such a way that Eve cannot steal it. 5 Answer Key QUANTUM KEY DISTRIBUTION (QKD) The one-time pad is a perfectly secure way for Alice and Bob to communicate a secret message. Think of the cipher like a locked safe that holds the message. An eavesdropper can intercept the safe, but without the key, they have no way of opening it to reveal the message. As long as Alice and Bob keep their shared key perfectly secret, there is no way for an eavesdropper to learn the message. But how do Alice and Bob share the key in the first place? Note that sharing the key is different than sharing a message. The key is a completely random binary sequence, and contains no useful information itself. But if Alice and Bob share the same random sequence, they can use it to encrypt secret messages! Quantum key distribution (QKD) uses quantum mechanics to solve the problem of establishing the secret key securely.

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